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Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s rejection of a new law expanding collective bargaining rights for teachers has led to a division in the state’s Democratic coalition. It also generated discontent with a figure thought to be among her party’s future national leaders.
Last Thursday, Spanberger vetoed legislation that would have allowed public school teachers, among other public-sector employees, to form unions and negotiate over their wages and working conditions throughout Virginia. At present, those workers can organize only in localities that opt into such arrangements; those number fewer than 20 of the state’s 133 city- or county-level governments.
Many of the governor’s supporters in labor were outraged by the decision, calling it a “betrayal” of a key constituency. One of the largest unions in the state, the Virginia Education Association, endorsed Spanberger’s campaign almost a full year before last fall’s election, putting their membership of more than 40,000 teachers and school personnel behind a high-profile effort to retake the governor’s mansion from Republican control.
VEA President Carol Bauer referenced her organization’s efforts in an interview with The 74, calling the veto “a great disappointment.”
“Our members campaigned for Gov. Spanberger on the promise that she supported workers, supported affordability, and supported collective bargaining, and we were hopeful,” Bauer said. “We had every indication she was going to sign a collective bargaining bill.”
But the Democratic-led proposal to allow statewide bargaining put Spanberger in the challenging position of weighing workers’ rights — an especially potent issue in her state after the Trump administration terminated thousands of federal employees in early 2025 — against her mandate to reduce costs for taxpayers and local governments, which have climbed dramatically in recent years. If inflation and interest rates continue to rise in accordance with projections, other Democratic leaders could soon face similar considerations.
The governor’s office did not respond to a request for comment. But one of the bill’s main detractors said her veto was a necessary corrective.
Derrick Max, president of Virginia’s conservative Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy, called the legislation an overreach that would weaken local control over public services. While some of the bluest communities in the state have already allowed collective bargaining for their workforces, including those in Richmond and the suburban counties around Washington, D.C., other Democratic-led jurisdictions have demurred over concerns about financial implications, he said.
“The biggest problem is that [HB 1263] took local governments out of the decision on whether or not to allow collective bargaining,” Max wrote in an email. “At a time when affordability is the top priority, passing a bill that would likely lead to massive increases in costs was not wise.”
Local officials made some of the same criticisms throughout the spring while attempting to put the brakes on the bill, arguing that compelling them to bargain with teachers, firefighters, and other public employees would significantly erode their flexibility in budgeting. By the time of the legislature’s vote, roughly three-quarters of counties across the state had issued statements in opposition to the adoption of the law.
It is difficult to estimate a price tag for the policy, the costs of which will ultimately depend on the outcome of negotiations between workers and school boards. The Virginia Commission on Local Government, a state agency created to assist towns, cities and counties, issued a report indicating that some jurisdictions could face recurring expenses totaling in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Yet activists in the VEA and other unions argued that a guaranteed right to negotiate over pay and working conditions was critical to closing wage gaps in the teaching profession, protecting workers from retaliation for seeking to organize, and limiting staff turnover that has proven deleterious to student achievement.
It also situated the fight playing out in the state’s House of Delegates within the broader struggle to win greater power for labor and end Virginia’s long-running reputation as a state hostile to public-sector unions. Educators only gained limited bargaining rights in 2020, after Democrats took unified control over state government for the first time in a generation; prior to that breakthrough, Virginia was one of just three states that expressly banned the practice.
Analysis: Amid Push for Collective Bargaining, Virginia Education Association Takes Control of Second Large Local in 5 Months
Local teachers rushed to swell the ranks of unions in the aftermath, forming large new organizations in just a few years. The emergence of the Fairfax Education Unions in the state’s largest county was hailed by the national American Federation of Teachers as “the largest U.S. public sector union victory in 25 years.”
In her bid to reclaim the governorship after the single term of Republican Glenn Youngkin, Spanberger leaned heavily on the organizing power of labor, vowing to “stand up for Virginia’s workers” after the mass layoffs precipitated by the Trump administration. Yet she also walked a careful line in campaign pronouncements, dismissing the idea of fully repealing the state’s right-to-work statute even as she acknowledged that it would “disappoint” some of her supporters.
As Democrats in Richmond came closer to passing the statewide expansion, the governor asked the legislature to consider amendments that would delay its implementation until 2030 to allow local governments to prepare for the adjustment. Those proposed changes were ultimately not taken up.
Balancing the demands of her coalition may be particularly important as Spanberger considers her political future. She was elected only last fall in one of the first races to show a substantial Democratic recovery from the doldrums of the 2024 presidential contest, and within weeks of her inauguration, she was tapped to give the official response to President Trump’s State of the Union address — a plum reserved for fast risers.
Since then, the governor has been embroiled in a highly controversial push to re-draw Virginia’s congressional districts, boosting her profile and enraging her opponents at the same time. A recent poll showed that her favorability ratings have suffered in recent months.
Though it is too early to speculate on the state of the 2028 primary field, any Democrat with ambitions to lead their party will need to court teachers’ unions, whose millions of members and generous campaign contributions help deliver victory in primary campaigns and general elections alike. Governors thought to be considering a run, including Illinois’s J.B. Pritzker and Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer, have already approved significant expansions in worker’s rights in their respective states. In Wisconsin, the controversial Act 10 law barring teachers from negotiating over compensation is thought to be in serious legal jeopardy now that Democrats control the state’s Supreme Court.
Act 10, Scourge of Wisconsin Teachers, Faces Uncertain Future in Court
Michael Hartney, a political scientist at Boston College who studies the political power of teachers’ unions, said that Spanberger’s veto may reflect political calculation as much as principle. Unlike those in other states, governors in Virginia cannot serve consecutive terms, meaning that frustrating her labor allies won’t cost her reelection in a few years’ time, he wrote in an email.
“For Spanberger, the move allows her to cultivate an image as a centrist, ‘abundance’-oriented Democrat rather than a reflexive ally of public-sector unions — a potentially valuable distinction if she wants to occupy that moderate lane within the party,” Hartney observed.
For her part, Bauer said that she hoped to persuade Spanberger that her organization’s priorities should be central to the Democratic agenda in the months and years to come.
“We will be organizing,” she said. “Our action didn’t start with this bill, and it’s not going to end with this bill.”
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